


Twenty Years

by elaine



Category: Coldfire Trilogy - C. S. Friedman
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-11
Updated: 2011-12-11
Packaged: 2017-10-27 04:41:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/291728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elaine/pseuds/elaine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twenty years and more of demon hunting have taken a toll on Damien Vryce. A sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/291719">Coldfire, Hot Bath</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Twenty Years

Damien dispatched the first demonling without much difficulty, but the second was either wilier than the other, or Damien himself was tiring more easily. It degenerated into the kind of slogging match that he tried to avoid these days, with neither of them able to prevail nor showing any willingness to retreat. Ren was no help – he’d taken on three of their five prey and still faced a double attack from the remaining two.

Eventually, a harsh scream from behind told Damien that Ren had finished off one of his opponents and Damien knew, with a relief he didn’t want to admit to, that the other wouldn’t be far behind. Sure enough, there was another scream a moment later, and then Ren was by his side, lunging forward to spit the remaining demonling like last week’s roast dinner.

“I’m too vulking old for this game,” Damien whooped, leaning on his sword and dragging in huge gulps of air.

A perfunctory pat on his shoulder was all the response he got, Ren being more interested – as he should be – in making sure none of their quarry were faking, and that there weren’t any others in the vicinity.

He returned shortly, leading the horses. “There’s a dae not far north of here. We’ll stop there a night or two.”

Damien straightened, roughly knuckling sweat and hair out of his eyes. Ren’s voice was grim, his face tightly shuttered. “Did you See something?”

A shake of the head as he handed Damien the reins of his horse was all the response Ren offered. He mounted his own horse, colour the dense black of True Night, and looked down at Damien, impatience masking some other emotion. “Mount up. I have a yen for a bath and a decent meal.”

“And a bed.” Damien grinned lecherously, but his heart wasn’t in it. Ren might not look a day older than he had the first time they’d made love, but Damien knew the same could not be said of him, and lately he’d begun to feel it too. More than forty years of hard living – first in service to the Church, and latterly as a freelance mercenary – was starting to take its toll.

Ren’s eyes met his with an expression of resigned humour. “Mount up.”

“Fine, fine…” Damien groused; he put his foot in the stirrup and heaved. It took a painful effort to get his leg across, and it felt like he’d pulled a muscle in his chest, dragging himself up so vulking clumsily. He settled himself in the saddle grumbling with annoyance and then the pain struck again, bad enough to double him over the pommel. So, not a pulled muscle then, was his last thought, as he tumbled sideways.

***

Waking to an absence of pain that was almost as shocking, Damien wondered lazily if he’d died and… nah, he was most likely go to the Other Place when his life ended, and unless hell was more deceptive than he’d ever imagined possible, it wouldn’t include a soft, comfortable bed with clean-smelling sheets and a warm, wiry body snugged up close against his side.

He opened his eyes and stared up at the patch of sunlight on the ceiling. Late afternoon, was his guess, so unless he’d had a short nap – which he doubted, his body was far too relaxed – then he’d slept the day through. But he felt fine – no pain in his chest, no tiredness in his limbs or aches in his joints. In fact, he felt better than he had in years.

The sound of a raucous squabble between two chickens in the courtyard below assaulted his eardrums and caused a stirring in the body beside him. Damien yawned and stretched as best he could with his left side immobilised, then turned his attention to his lover. The dark head burrowed into his shoulder, protesting the light, and the hand that lay on Damien’s chest flexed briefly, the long fingers rubbing distractedly through his chest hair. Hair that, Damien realised as he looked down, seemed to have a lot less grey in it than he remembered from the last time he’d looked.

His brows knotted as he mulled over the puzzle, and he lifted his hand to stroke the long dark hair that tickled his shoulder. As the sleek, sweet-smelling strands slipped though his raised fingers Damien’s frown deepened. He couldn’t remember ever seeing grey in Ren’s hair before, but now there were, indisputably, a few fine streaks amongst the dense black. Damien’s heart began to beat faster and he shook his lover’s shoulder gently.

“Ren.” Another, more imperative shake. “Ren! Wake up.”

An exasperated sigh gusted warm, moist air against his skin. “What is it, and can’t it wait?”

“No it can’t. Something’s happened, and… what in hell…?” he stared at Ren, shocked into silence.

Twenty years had passed since he’d first met Ren – he’d long since learned never to think of him as anything other than Ren – and in those years, Damien had aged. He was pushing sixty and it showed. Ren – even allowing for his youthful appearance when they met – had to be close to forty; yet he’d never looked much over twenty years old. It was another of those things that Damien had learned not to question; it was simply too dangerous to Ren’s continued existence. Now Damien could see the marks of those twenty years, subtle, but there, in the fine streaks of grey in his hair, the tiny wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the slight pouchiness in the skin of his face.

Put that together with his own improved well-being and there was only one way this equation added up. Ren had Worked, and in the years since the Second Sacrifice, there was only one way to Work the fae. Damien rolled away from his lover and flung himself out of bed and across the small room to stare at his own face in the mirror. He looked twenty years younger.

He froze there for a moment, fingertips touching his cheek, then turned back to the bed. Ren was sitting up, the blankets pooled around his hips. A stranger, looking at them, would see two men roughly the same age. Damien strode back to the bed, grabbing Ren by the shoulders. “What the vulk have you done?”

Ren freed himself with a quick, twisty manoeuvre – despite his bulk and greater strength, Damien never had been able to hold him captive unless Ren allowed it. “You were dying. By the time I got you here you’d had a second heart attack. You wouldn’t have survived a third.” He adjusted the covers minutely, his eyes lowered, apparently absorbed in his task.

He wouldn’t say more, Damien knew. Ren was no more willing to expose his emotions than Tarrant had ever been. He sank to the edge of the bed, anger waning as swiftly as it had waxed. “And you? How much have you lost?”

The corner of Ren’s mouth flicked up. “Not nearly as much as you’ve gained. The fae have always loved Sacrifice. It seems a fair exchange.”

Mouth dry, Damien felt his eyes unaccountably blurring. He lifted a hand to the no longer perfectly smooth cheek. “You mean I have to put up with another twenty years of you?”

The sarcasm worked as he’d intended. Ren looked up, a wry, genuine smile replacing the forced one. “Think of it as your share of the Sacrifice.”

With a growl of mock exasperation, Damien launched himself at the other man, shoving him down roughly against the sunwarmed blankets and covering his mouth in a hard, desperate kiss that conveyed everything he needed to say and never would. In moments their positions were reversed, Ren straddling his hips, pushing his hands down against the mattress. Gerald didn’t resist – much. The best thing about having a lover for twenty years was knowing, instinctively, when to stand firm and when to give way. There was plenty to be said for both options.

That didn’t mean Damien had to be passive, though. He gave as good as he got, biting at Ren’s lips, nipping reddened patches into the fine, olive skin of his throat then soothing them with gentle sweeps of his tongue. And he was hard – wonderfully, gloriously hard, like he hadn’t been in months – rocking his hips up challengingly against Ren’s ass.

“Not this time, Vryce.” Ren grinned mockingly and shifted his weight just a fraction. A quick twist and Ren was between his thighs, cock brushing teasingly against Damien’s. “This time, you’re mine.”

God, it was incredible. Damien realised, belatedly, just how careful Ren had been in their lovemaking in recent months. He laughed up into his lover’s face, “Then stop vulking talking and do something.”

Ren’s mouth thinned, annoyance and amusement warring briefly before amusement won out. He released Damien’s wrists and shoved his legs apart and back, folding them across his body. Then he leaned forward, rubbing his cock against Damien’s hole, using the moisture beading his slit as lubricant.

Damien groaned as long, agile fingers invaded his body, good, but not enough. He wanted Ren inside him, and he wanted it now. “Stop vulking messing around, dammit.”

Ren snarled. “It’s been months, Damien. Don’t be stupid.”

“Then hurry.” He rocked onto Ren’s fingers, greedily demanding more, faster, deeper, until Ren rolled his eyes and withdrew his fingers, wiping them fastidiously on the sheet.

His legs were shoved back even further, almost to his chin, curling his body up to meet Ren’s cock. And, vulk, he felt like he was being split open when Ren shoved inside him with no care whatsoever. Damien could only imagine what it had cost his lover to hold back all these months, but now there was no holding back, and that was exactly how he wanted it.

Ren leaned over him, hips driving into him, supporting himself at the full length of his arms, eyes half shut. Sweat trickled down his face and splattered onto Damien’s chest. His hair swayed about him in the currents raised by his movements, a few strands clinging damply to his face and arms.

There was something primeval, something ferocious about the singleminded fucking that sent Damien’s arousal soaring. He grabbed his cock, jerking himself roughly in time to Ren’s thrusts, glorying in the newfound revival of his libido. Gasping breaths escaped both men, and occasional muttered curses, until Damien felt like he might just about be having another heart attack. He cried out, clutching desperately at his cock, feeling it pulse and the scalding drops of seed falling against his skin. For a moment his awareness faded, but it couldn’t have been long, because his cock was still twitching under his hand as he coaxed out the last, tiny aftershocks.

“Ren.” He reached up a sticky hand to stroke his lover’s chest, feeling the thud of his heart, palm sliding against sweat slick skin. His own needs assuaged, he recognised now that there was something very wrong. “Ren, it’s all right. It’s all right.”

Ren stilled, his slitted eyes meeting Damien’s, and he saw the anguish glinting in their depths. For months he’d been watching Damien’s gradual decline. He’d risked his life to give Damien – to give both of them – more time. It was an unimaginable gift and now he needed to let go of the fear that had been driving him for so long. Damien grasped his shoulders, his hands seeming large and clumsy against the fine bones, and pulled Ren down into his arms. He stroked down the long slender back and turned his face into the damp hair. “It’s all right.”

A shudder ran through Ren’s body, echoed in his own, and then Ren was moving again, thrusting into him, but with more care now. His breath was coming in sobs and Damien could feel the impending climax in the tension of his body. He shuddered again, groaning, and collapsed onto Damien, body completely limp though his cock was still hard inside him.

Long minutes passed as their breathing eased to normal and the sweat cooled on their bodies, but it was even longer before Ren finally rolled off Damien to lie sprawled beside him. He turned his head to examine his lover’s face, but Ren was giving nothing away at the moment and Damien knew better than to ask directly. He settled on oblique, instead.

“So, another day here and then what? I was thinking maybe we could go west.” It was a direction chosen at random. Wherever they went there would be more demonlings. Even twenty years after the Second Sacrifice, there were – still – always demonlings. It was the one thing you could be sure of, on Erna.

Ren didn’t move, or speak but his breathing hitched slightly.

Not west, then. Damien cast his mind back to the last time they’d checked a map. He couldn’t think of any place around here that Ren would have cause to avoid, or to want to visit. What the vulk was it he wanted?

“Or, maybe we could take a break for a while. It’s not like we need the money.” Ah. That obviously hit home. And after a moment, Ren turned his head slightly towards Damien.

“Could you do that?” Ren’s voice was quietly, sincerely, curious. “Sit back and let others do the fighting for a while?”

“Sure I could,” Damien asserted, blithely ignoring the tightening of his gut. Forty years was long enough for him to deserve a rest. For a week or two. Maybe longer. Between them they had more than enough dollars put aside for a holiday. Or to settle down… buy an inn, maybe, or a weapons store with a couple of rooms above to live in. He’d think about it… no point in saying anything to Ren until he was sure, but the thought of waking every day in the same bed, in the same room, in the same town had a certain kind of appeal.

He felt his cock stiffen slightly and grinned, levering himself up onto his elbow to lean over his lover. He’d almost forgotten how beautiful Ren was, all smooth olive skin and startlingly black hair – modest tufts under his arms, and a neat little patch at his groin, but his chest was still as smooth as a boy’s. Typical of Tarrant’s vanity to ensure that, but Damien wasn’t unappreciative of the effect.

“We’re not in any hurry, are we?” Slowly, still smiling, he lowered his head to meet his lover’s mouth.


End file.
